MediaTek sees SerDes 448G as copper's final battleground

The question of where the limits of cloud AI high-speed interconnects will fall has been a major market focus over the past six months. MediaTek addressed the issue for the first time, identifying SerDes 448G as copper's final battleground. MediaTek said its 2nm-based 448G SerDes is on schedule and is expected to become available during the second half of 2027. The electrical interface is being developed alongside a Co-Package Copper (CPC) system solution intended to deliver high bandwidth with competitive power consumption over short-reach connections. Beyond 448G electrical signaling, MediaTek expects future generations to move increasingly toward optical connectivity. The company is developing CPO system solutions using TSMC's COUPE platform. MediaTek's 448G SerDes development is part of its broader strategy to scale custom AI accelerator ASICs for hyperscale data centers, combining advanced-node design with co-optimization with TSMC, packaging integration, substrates, memory and supply-chain orchestration. The SerDes technology is critical for next-generation AI infrastructure, where high-speed interconnects between GPUs, CPUs, and memory components are becoming a key bottleneck. As AI models grow larger and require more compute resources, the demand for higher-bandwidth, lower-latency interconnects is driving the industry toward 448G SerDes and eventually optical connectivity. MediaTek's positioning of 448G as copper's final battleground suggests that beyond this speed, the industry will need to transition to optical interconnects to meet the bandwidth and power efficiency requirements of future AI systems.